Blippar's celebrity face-mashing app is filled with pictures of killers, terrorists, and dictators

A new app from augmented reality startup Blippar lets you
superimpose your face onto celebrities like Mariah Carey and Mark
Wahlberg - but also inadvertently suggests serial killers,
terrorists, and even the artwork of Adolf Hitler.

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FaceJam is marketed as a lighthearted way to put your face on a
celebrity's, and as a way for Blippar to show off its artificial
intelligence software.

When you open the app on the iPhone, FaceJam displays images of
celebrities, paintings, and even currencies across different
tabs. You take a selfie and pick a celebrity on which to
superimpose your face, with the app then prompting you to share
the final image on your social networks.

When Business Insider tested FaceJam, we found murderers such as
Ted Bundy, Myra Hindley, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Edmund
Kemper, and "American Ripper" H.H Holmes showing up unprompted on
the app's gallery of celebrities, alongside Marilyn Monroe,
Robert Downey Jr., and other Hollywood stars.

Finding the murderers didn't require any proactive search, and
they were simply displayed openly inside the app.

There was also an image of Otto Warmbier, the US student who died
after a period of captivity in North Korea, the drug smuggler
Barry Seal, and the musician XXXTentacion, who was arrested
recently for alleged domestic violence.

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James Cook/Business Insider

And there are controversial figures such as OJ Simpson,
contrarian alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, Donald
Trump's campaign manager Steve Bannon, and Confederate general
Robert E. Lee.

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Business Insider

Each image was tagged with the person's name, but there was no
other warning that the person was anything other than a normal
celebrity.

It took less than a minute of scroll through the app's galleries
before the images took a darker turn. Neo-Nazis and dictators
ranked alongside Meghan Markle and Ed Sheeran.

Further scrolling on the artwork sections showed paintings
created by Adolf Hitler.

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Adolf Hitler's artwork in FaceJam's gallery.

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James Cook/Business Insider

It isn't clear how Blippar sourced its database of images, or
whether it moderates what's on that database.

The company told Business Insider: "Blippar implements best
practice procedures to monitor and remove offensive content but,
like every tech platform around the world, this is an ongoing
process. We take this issue seriously and are continuously
reviewing the Facejam app for any images that might be considered
by some to be inappropriate."